You're misunderstanding me completely. (And intentionally?)
ImriSkip misses (at least) half the equation:
Removing legal guns does not mean I won't be shot, won't be killed by other means.
Who said anything about removing *only legal* guns?!?
Not me, for sure. Of fucking *course* "removing the guns" will only work if it removes *all* the guns.
It does mean that I, personally, won't be able to do anything about it if the situation comes up, though.
It would mean that I would have to depend on Mother-Father-Brother government to protect me.
Yeah, yeah; Evil Big Brother, blah blah blah...
Are you *sure* you shouldn't go off into the hills and found your own little mini-state-within-a-state...? (Remember to call it something with "Free" and "Militia" in it, and to always, *always*, ALWAYS refer to your place as a "compound". HTH! :-)
"Remove the means of something, and the something won't occur as frequently any more, is another at least as sound approach."
As sound? Remove self-defense, and killings will stop? HERE? I don't buy it.
It's at least as *logically* valid a *theoretical* approach as removing the root cause, which you apparently insist on being the *only* valid approach.
Look, I think you're misunderstanding my part in this debate: I am NOT saying removing all the guns is a *practically* feasible solution, or that it's absolutely and definitely the one you guys should (try to) follow.
I'm pretty much a disinterested bystander(*) in this debate, and only dipped in to correct a few logical errors; an Ashtonian endeavour of protecting the language from corruption; or trying to referee the meta-level of the conversation that you guys are carrying out the base level of, if you will.
To wit: My whole point was that your post about "removing the guns" being "illogical" and necessarily "emotional" was bogus; *logically*, it's prefectly valid.
And what's whith the straw man, Christian? "According to your own post... ...killing eachother all the time"? Youreally can argue logically when you want - why resort to things like that?
Huh?!?
You're parsing it all wrong!
That was, "due to your flawed characters -- according to your own post"; pointing out that the "flawed characters" EXPLANATION OF THE REASON (for *why* you Yanks go around killing each other with guns all the time) was yours.
I WAS NOT claiming that my formulation of the whole problem -- that "you Yanks go around killing each other with guns all the time" -- was yours. That's a given, anyway; obvious to anyone.
And I wouldn't have thought it's controversial, either: What is it you are protesting as a "strawman" -- are you claiming that you Yanks *don't* go around killing each other with guns all the time(+)? Or are you saying that it isn't a problem?
(*): I'm pretty much convinced, and getting ever more so, that not only are you Yanks basically weirdoes, but you're also incorrigible ones and won't ever come to your senses. Not that you aren't prefectly nice people, most of you, on a one-to-one level, and I wouldn't blink an eye at having *one or a few of you* as neighbours, provided the neighbourhood itself was somewhere sane... But, *as a nation*, you are at least psychotic, and possibly downright psychopathic.
So, since you guys aren't ever going to either give up your guns, or become civilised enough to stop killing each other with them all the time, WTF would be the use for me to *actually* participate in any such discussion? Naah... So what I am trying to protect from abuse here is just a meta-level entity; the language that, at least so far, is still the common English one. (Once your Yank weirdification of it has gone far enough that it's oficially a separate thing from the Queen's English, you can do whatever you want to it, for all I care. But not until then.)
(+): Oh, for fuck's sake, read that little flight of hyperbole as (black-)humourously as it was intended! *Compared to anybody else*, "it sure seems as if you guys have a hard time squeezing in both an eight-hour workday AND a social life, between all the shootouts!", like... :-)
